In the formation of many products, particularly consumer products, machines for manufacturing the products operate at very high speeds and deliver enormous numbers of finished products at a rapid rate. These products then must be received, separated into counted groups and packaged. Often the apparatus for grouping and packaging of material is unable to deal with the formation of materials at the same rate as they are being delivered from the forming machine. Therefore, it is often necessary to divide the output from a single machine into several lines for counting and packaging. This requires duplication of equipment and is expensive. Therefore, if possible it is advisable that the conveying equipment attached to a production machine be able to handle all the output of the machine with a single loading place and unloading site for delivery to a packager. However, one difficulty in doing this is that the manufactured items are delivered one at a time from the forming machine whereas the delivery to the packaging machine is best performed in lot sizes that are suitable for packaging. Therefore, the conveyor should be able to gather single items continuously but be able to stop and unload groups of the gathered manufactured materials singly.
In the manufacture of feminine care pads that are commonly wrapped in individual polymer film wrappings and then the individually wrapped pads packaged in polymer bags there is an additional complication in that the pads generally need to be compressed after removal from the individual packaging machine and prior to being placed in the polymer bags as sold to the consumer. The polymer bags must be tightly packed in order to be used most effectively and also to present the best appearance. Therefore, it is preferred that a machine for such use be able to receive the individually wrapped napkins individually, unload them in groups for packaging and also compress the groups of individual packages by an amount that is satisfactory for placement into the large polymer bags for shipping. Prior conveying apparatus has not been required to meet all these needs and additionally operate at a high rate. Further, it has been a practice to utilize two bagging lines for one forming machine allowing switching back and forth between the conveyors so that one can stop for unloading while the other is loading. However, the maintenance of the switching system, dual conveyors and dual baggers is expensive and therefore it would be advantageous to eliminate such dual systems.